Uncommon Business is a blog about people who make money online selling unusual, strange and sometimes bizarre things or provide curious services. This isn’t “One Hundred And One Ideas For Your Homebased Business” – only real, working businesses with URLs provided, so you can do further investigation on your own. And if you do own an unusual web business, make sure you submit your story to us. SHLD

Sunday, June 10, 2012

Meet Donuts.Co - New Startup That Raised $100 Million And Applied For 307 TLDs

"The existing spaces (like .com) are saturated." Daniel Schindler, Donuts co-founder is spot on. As per the WHOIS database, millions and millions of top-level domains have been registered to date - .com, .net, .info, .org. - that a good number of people are having a difficult time coming up with a domain that hasn't been registered yet.

It is for this reason that the idea of expanding Internet addresses beyond the aforementioned extensions to basically just about anything imaginable came to being, and Donuts, a web registry established in 2011, is hoping to cash in on the opportunity. As of this writing, Donuts is aiming to own and operate 307 new "dot-brand" extensions.

Aside from Donuts, hundreds of other companies have applied with the ICANN for new generic top-level domains (gTLDs), and the complete list of applications, along with the proposed domains, will be made known on June 13.

When Donuts started operations last year, right out of the gate, it had been very vocal about its intentions to take advantage of this opportunity. Starting with 3,000 potential domains in its list, through its proprietary method of valuing gTLDs, the company was able to narrow it down to 307, which, by most standards, is still a lot.

Donuts and other applicants are keeping their lips sealed about any specific domains for competitive reason. As of May 30, ICANN revealed it has received roughly 1,900 applications. Each domain application is estimated to cost about $185,000, meaning, Donuts had to pay $56.8 million for those on its list. In any case multiple applicants had to battle for the same domain, the name goes to auction, which could mean millions more in expenses for the winning bidder.

Schindler, however, isn't concerned. According to him, access to money isn't going to be a problem. Well, given that the guy has raised more than $100 million from investors, he has every reason to say that.